Morning Briefing 10/25/2017

Fox News’ Tucker Carlson reported on Tuesday night that Special Counsel Robert Mueller is now looking into the Podesta Group, a lobbying firm run by John Podesta and Tony Podesta. John Podesta was the Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman during the 2016 presidential campaign.

“The investigation has broadened to determine which people and organizations in Washington have spent years working secretly as de facto operatives on behalf of the Russia government. The Podesta Group is chief among these de facto foreign operatives. ‘They are more focused on facilitators of Russian influence in this country, not election collusion,’ our source said. The Podesta Group is ‘in their crosshairs.’”

Mueller’s investigation was originally launched to investigate allegations that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to win the 2016 presidential election. However, this source told Tucker, the investigation has shifted.

Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Arizona) announced Tuesday that he will not seek re-election in 2018. Flake has been under fire from President Trump and former White House strategist Steve Bannon, and it was certain that he would face a primary challenger.

Flake, who has been an outspoken critic of the President, blasted the “current Republican Party,” and said that there’s no place for him in “current Republican climate.”

“We must never regard as ‘normal’ the regular and casual undermining of our democratic norms and ideals. We must never meekly accept the daily sundering of our country — the personal attacks, the threats against principles, freedoms, and institutions, the flagrant disregard for truth or decency, the reckless provocations, most often for the pettiest and most personal reasons, reasons having nothing whatsoever to do with the fortunes of the people that we have all been elected to serve. None of these appalling features of our current politics should ever be regarded as normal.”

Sen. Flake is the second incumbent Republican senator to announce they will not seek re-election in 2018. Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tennessee) announced that he not seek re-election last month.

Opposition research has become part of political campaigns, which is why it may not be surprising that Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee helped finance research that eventually became the famous “Trump dossier” which was produced by the firm Fusion GPS.

What makes this story suspicious is that the Clinton campaign denied for months that it was involved in financing research for the dossier.

Last week, President Trump took to Twitter to ask if the DNC, the FBI, or Russia helped finance the dossier.

In a statement to CBS News, the DNC denies directing the investigation of Fusion GPS and said that the current DNC Chairman, Tom Perez, had any knowledge of the deal:

“Tom Perez and the new leadership of the DNC were not involved in any decision-making regarding Fusion GPS, nor were they aware that Perkins Coie was working with the organization.”